The next large scale release from Peach State Overland was just launched. This time, coverage of the first annual Red Clay Rally, organized by Overland Tennessee. This was a 3-day monte carlo style rally that spanned across paved and unpaved roads throughout the Appalachian Mountains from north-eastern Tennessee down through North Carolina and Georgia. For those who are unaware, as I was, a monte carlo style rally is not a race, but a timed event where the goal is to match as closely as possible to a set goal time. In this case, the organizer set the pace on a pre-run months prior to the event. If your team was too slow when compared to the goal time, you lost points, but if your team was too fast, you also lost points.

On the video production side of Peach State Overland, I’ve come to the conclusion that the better way to provide coverage of our trips is to, unfortunately, not drive. Capturing the details, the dialogue, the better angles, all require attention that is hard to spare when you’re driving your own rig. This is not only the case when driving, but setting up camp as well. Simply put, if your attention is diverted elsewhere, the content will naturally suffer. For the Red Clay Rally, the team wanted to put this theory to the test. We ran a three vehicle team, and all six (at the time) team member’s were in attendance. Specifically, we had three drivers responsible for each of their rigs, one navigator in the lead vehicle, and two people responsible for video/production. This allowed everyone to have a predetermined scope of responsibility and in my opinion, helped greatly.

The rally was hard work and put our team dynamic to the test. Ultimately, the video production improved. But you can be the judge.

]]>Little River Canyonhttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2017/03/little-river-canyon.html
Wed, 08 Mar 2017 23:18:48 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1366Quick montage of Little River Canyon in Alabama while we were checking out the higher than usual water levels. Enjoy!

We’ve been on the road for a little over 3 hours today as we’ve made our way up 24 from Capitol Reef National Park with a quick stop at Goblin Valley—our final destination for the day is a campsite near Rainbow Terrace Trail just north of Canyonlands. I haven’t truly showered in 3 days, unless you call wet wipes a viable alternative—I do not. All I can hear is the gravel grinding beneath my all-terrain’s and the squeaks of my dirt packed bushings as I weave in and out of the leading vehicle’s dust trails. Ahead of me is Steven, Patrick, and Dan in their 4runner’s. I’ve turned down my CB as the chatter is just a little too much while i’m trying to focus on shooting. Rainbow Terrace will be our first rated trail of the trip and we’re all looking forward to it. The sun is setting and igniting the plume of dust as we roll down Ruby Ranch road. It is exactly as I had imagined it being when I was jotting down rough shot lists for the trip during planning. We’re all tired, a little sun burnt, and it’s taking some will power to balance my need to get the shot versus take in this amazing moment.

Moments, like the one above, when all of your senses are stirring and you know you’re getting some good stuff on camera, are what made this trip special for me.

Please checkout the complete 3-part docu-series “Journey To Moab”

When Steven, Patrick, Dan, and I originally decided to take on this journey, Peach State Overland hadn’t even been formally created. We were, and technically still are, just a group of guys that like to travel off-road, be prepared, self-sufficient, etc. (We’re just a little bit more organized and motivated now.) As the trip planning continued, it became evident that this was an opportunity of a lifetime if we could capture this and turn it into something. At the time I didn’t know what, simply that we must film it. This kind of documentary coverage, in the field, running and gunning, is exactly what I love doing.

Journey To Moab was a lot of firsts for me; first project of this scope, first time taking a road trip of this size and duration, and first time truly editing a project on Final Cut Pro X (I now prefer it over Premiere for cutting stories). Honestly, I came into the project a little wary when we initially looked at the scope of it. I typically cut smaller web featurettes roughly 2 to 3 minutes in length, but this was a different beast from every angle. The load was shared with the team’s other producer/camera operator, Patrick Metzger. He’s assisted on finding footage, guiding the story, sourcing music, and has come into his own on shooting—always experimenting, always learning.

We knew there would be a lot of footage and new challenges, so we tried to account for them early on in planning. Patrick and I needed to look at equipment, charging batteries without access to power, backing up memory cards, as well as what we planned to shoot. We started by figuring out what equipment we needed based on a rough shot list for the trip. We both ended up bringing the standard affair, a DSLR and a GoPro, a 3ft slider, and other various but lightweight camera support. Steven also chimed in with his two Sony ActionCams that would provide various dash footage throughout the journey. We thought through what we’d be shooting day to day and analyzed how much footage would fit on a memory card of a given size. I like to shoot on smaller cards, 32GB, so if one fails you don’t lose as much. I ended up bringing two WD Passport Wireless drives to offload and backup my SD cards as the trip progressed; these are an invaluable tool in my kit now. Other concerns were batteries and charging. I ended up adding an inverter to my Xterra as well as USB chargers for the Canon and GoPro batteries. The biggest challenge though wasn’t the equipment or even knowing what to shoot, it was how we were going to shoot it. I’m not referring to shot composition here, but how we were physically going to shoot it with both Patrick and I serving dual roles as camera operators and drivers. This predicament is precisely why Expedition Overland has a production arm and an expedition arm on their trips. It’s just wasn’t possible to fully execute the kind of production quality I wanted to have and still drive my truck. So admittedly this is a sacrifice that we had to make on this production.

The trip took 11 days for Steven and Patrick and 10 days for myself and Dan. Steven and Patrick leaving earlier so they could have some down time in Vegas with their wives. Patrick was the responsible for filming on their trip out and I was for our journey, prior to us meeting up in Las Vegas. We travelled through 17 states and roughly 4500 miles overall and ended up with somewhere around 20-24 hours of footage—the project as it sits is about 1.65TB of media. The footage we captured was from three separate shoots; the prep trip we took at the end of February 2016 as well as the trip itself during the first week of April. Over the summer we began planning the interview shoot which took place in July. This shoot would be integral to set the pace and move the story along. Ryan Basler was also a tremendous help as he ran camera for the interviews while both Patrick and I were sitting in the hot seat (Side note: I don’t know how anyone gets used to being on camera. Having to listen to myself talk was truly unpleasant, my only saving grace was the fact that I was recovering from losing my voice the day of the interview shoot so I didn’t sound like myself). From there editing began, starting with the syncing of the interview VO with camera audio and then getting all the media ingested into the computer, logged, and sifting through it to get familiar with the footage that not only I shot, but also all of Patrick’s and Steven’s additional b-roll.

The trip was a blast and we saw things that we’d only seen online and people’s trip reports on Expedition Portal. That site was one of the main sources of inspiration for how I wanted to tell the story of the trip. Everyone describing their own perspective of the trip, set to video, creating a visual account as the events played out. During editing I made it a point to not watch anyone else’s videos that have been coming out from other groups this year. There were so many…I did not want to get influenced by anyone’s production or editing style. I wanted this project to be my own, how I edit, and how I wanted to tell the story. The trip was what it is was, nothing added in. We simply didn’t have any break downs or big mishaps, so no drama. Call it boring or call it being prepared, that’s your call. I don’t think any of those that went would change a thing, and I can guarantee we would all do it again.

]]>http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2017/01/producing-journey-to-moab.html/feed1Headshotshttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/10/headshots.html
http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/10/headshots.html#respondWed, 05 Oct 2016 17:25:15 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1335An opportunity came up from my friend and photographer, Bill Manning. Bill had recently gained access to some studio space in Downtown Atlanta and wanted to experiment with new lighting techniques. I put a bug in his ear that if there were ever some time he needed to mess around with gear or lighting, etc. to give me a call cause I would love to get some nice headshots done. The time had arrived.

Despite some complications in the scheduling of the studio, we made it work. All in all, we spent 3 or so hours with setup and takedown and came out with some really nice digital and film shots. Bill is a Nikon guy, which I tend to hold against him, but I know they make just as good of a camera as the competition. He has also ran through some film on his Mamiya medium format camera. We bounced lighting ideas back and forth and played around with different light reflectors and diffusers. It was a really good experience.

]]>http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/10/headshots.html/feed0Journey To Moab Updatehttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/07/journey-to-moab-update.html
http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/07/journey-to-moab-update.html#respondThu, 21 Jul 2016 00:41:05 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1317Last weekend, the members of Peach State Overland present for the Moab trip this past spring were able to get together so we could shoot the interview portion of our upcoming docu-series. It was a long 12hr day, not including setup and take down. Here’s a breakdown of what we did:

Lighting: I ended up doing a 2 light setup with a 500 watt Lowel Omni as the key light on the short side of the face and white bounce disk for the fill on the long camera side of the face. All lights needed a blue gel to try and get close to the fluorescents that lit the rig in the background. I used a Lowel Pro-light in the back for a hair light. All in all, it was probably a bit too dramatic of a look, but it still worked.

Camera/Audio: My friend Ryan Basler ran camera for me, specifically my trusty 60D and newer SL1, while I interviewed and ran audio on the Zoom H4n. We used a Sennheiser wireless lavalier and Audio Technica shotgun mic on a boom for audio.

I think we ended up with roughly 5-6hrs of interview footage to tell the story of the trip. I don’t have a full story arc planned out yet, so I ended up getting everyone to walk me through the trip in their own words. During the edit I will use bits and chunks of various interviews to stitch together a more encompassing trip report. While a lot of the interviews are repetitious, there are unique perspectives and stories that standout. These, I hope, will give some ups and downs to the arc in order to keep people watching.

This is my first attempt at a production of this scale so I’m learning as I go. There is 10 days worth of various footage, candid self-interviews, driving b-roll, landscapes, time-lapses, etc. At least interviews are second nature to me. This fact both worries me and puts me at ease, as I wonder if I could be doing something better…er, different. Maybe asking different questions or doing something different with lighting or camera angles, while still knowing that I can at least knock them out with some proficiency. I’m still wondering how to format it all, 5-10min parts, maybe longer but fewer parts, maybe one long feature.

]]>http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/07/journey-to-moab-update.html/feed0A moment in 60 seconds or lesshttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/a-moment-in-60-seconds-or-less.html
http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/a-moment-in-60-seconds-or-less.html#respondMon, 16 May 2016 15:48:55 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1306Now that Instagram has finally increased their video length to 60, fun-filled, useable seconds, people are finally going to be able to make something interesting. 15-seconds was great for short clips and even made for some very funny moments when a video would auto-repeat. 60-seconds opens the door to where someone can be reached by the video, but not so wide that there’s not a challenge in editing for time—one of the larger challenges of visual story telling—but also not so long that the viewer loses interest when they’re in that “insta-” frame of mind and just want something quick and visually appealing. I welcome the compromise.

For Peach State Overland, we’ve had the ability to get in some good rides the last two weekends in Tennessee. One in the Cherokee State Forest and this past weekend in Prentice Cooper State Forest. I’ve tried to do my best in capturing some quick clips with the DJI Osmo while still enjoying the trip. With the footage, I’ve come up with some short edits that summarize the rides and play well on Instagram and Youtube. PSO has contact with a local band that we’ve been tapping for some great summer music for the videos, Jackson County Line.

]]>http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/a-moment-in-60-seconds-or-less.html/feed0#GOXPLORhttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/slider-image-1.html
http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/slider-image-1.html#respondTue, 10 May 2016 16:27:49 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1245http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/slider-image-1.html/feed0Toying with DJI’s Osmohttp://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/toying-with-djis-osmo.html
http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/2016/05/toying-with-djis-osmo.html#respondTue, 10 May 2016 01:46:49 +0000http://www.kevinkeeganpro.com/?p=1272I’ve been eyeing one of the small 3-axis gimbals that are on the market. I currently have a GoPro, so options like the Feiyu G3 received a small portion of my research foray. I also looked at the DJI Osmo—and ultimately purchased one.

Having just gotten back from documenting an epic cross-country trip with our overland group Peach State Overland, issues and wants from the trip were fresh in my mind and grabbing quick and smooth shots like these would have improved the production value greatly.

So far my qualm’s with the Osmo are battery life and the bobbing movement that persists. The latter is unavoidable unless you get DJI’s new Z-axis that, like a Steadicam, isolates the camera from the natural movement in a person’s gate while walking. But despite these minor short comings, I’ve been very impressed with the quality and ease of use of the device. There are some other suggested accessories:

Additional batteries, at least three, so you can cycle them out while one is charging.

Some ND filters so you can lock down your shutter speed in bright sunlight.